Uttar Pradesh to take lessons from Gujarat model in traffic management

NEW DELHI: To get back in the Smart City race after missing out in the first round, Uttar Pradesh is now willing to take lessons from Gujarat in traffic management. The revised Smart City plan of Ghaziabad has now proposed replication of Ahmedabad’s Intelligent Traffic System (ITS) at the cost of Rs 151 crore to solve its traffic congestion problem on all the three national highways.

Ahmedabad is the first city in the country to implement an ITS on its ring road using camera-based traffic sensors which project vehicle density determining automated functioning of traffic lights and advance warnings of congestion to commuters on display LED boards. Ghaziabad has proposed to replicate this system given its average traffic speeds are just about 25-30 kms per hour and just 15-25 kms per hour during peak hours, as per a report. It plans to recover the capital cost of the system through advertisements on the LEDs.

Traffic congestion is seen as a big drawback of Ghaziabad in Smart City race. The traffic flow in Ghaziabad is about 30000 PCUs per day due to three national highways – NH-24, NH-58 and NH-91 — passing through the city.

Ghaziabad’s ITS also envisages a mobile-based application for disbursing traffic related information and give a ‘travel time prediction’ as a useful utility to let the commuter plan his travel.